Technology Medley

No, not that season! This is May, after all. This is the season for those all important standardized tests, and both teachers and students are busy preparing for them. In our case, this preparation has included our very first experiences with online testing. So, in addition to reviewing an entire year’s worth of material, and in some cases, more than one year’s worth, teachers have had to make sure their students were familiar with the online testing formats.

We begin next week, and I feel very confident that everyone involved is ready…maybe a bit anxious, but definitely well prepared and competent. So, to help alleviate some of that anxiety, I have compiled a list of fun sites on the internet to take your minds off of testing for a few minutes.

I found a stress test on the internet, so please begin here to assess how stressed you may be. If, after taking this very scientific test, you determine that you are moderately stressed, check out some of the following links and have fun!

Virtual Bubble Wrap
Go pop some bubbles. You know you want to!

Cute Overload
cute pictures and videos of a variety of animals

JigZone
If you love jigsaw puzzles, this it the site for you

Virtual Paintball
Whack some smilies in this office, or just “decorate” with the paint

The Red Square
Move the red square so it doesn’t touch any of the blue rectangles

Blobs
Think Chinese Checkers with frogs

Free Rice
Practice your vocabulary skills

Net Disaster
Select a web site and then throw cream pies at it…and other goodies

OK, those links should get you started. I’m sure that you have your own favorite sites that you visit once in a while just for fun. Please share them in the comments so all of us can enjoy them!

I added Kerpoof.com to my Delicious bookmarks back in September, but I have only recently begun exploring this fun site. It’s a kid friendly site, and it’s fun for kids of all ages. You can draw, mix and paint with virtual watercolors, create drawings with stamps and backgrounds, and even create videos.

Here’s a link to a simple, silly movie that I just created.

I don’t know about you, but I can get completely lost in a site like this! Those of you with artistic talents will really enjoy playing here, and your students will too. The nice thing is, you do not need to register to play around here, and the files that have been shared have also been approved, so it’s safe for kids.

There is a link for teachers and an archive of newsletters with ideas for using Kerpoof in the classroom.  Check it out!

I suspect that I’m not the only person who feels as if we have been preparing for our first ever elementary online SOL testing forever! I’ve tried to stay positive and encouraging while helping prepare both students and teachers for the big event. Well, exactly 2 weeks from today, we begin with 4th grade English, and I’m feeling a bit stressed. Not sure why, but all of the “what ifs” are floating around in my head today, and I don’t like that!

So, I’ve decided to make a list of all of the positives, because our students are going to be just fine!

First, the teachers and staff:

• We have amazing teachers who have covered an incredible amount of content during this school year.
• They do whatever is necessary to assure that every student has the opportunity to learn and be successful, including volunteering their own time to stay after school and tutor those who need a little additional help.
• Teachers have been using the laptop carts for both student projects and test review.
• Those same teachers find time to review material from earlier in the year, and in many cases, material from previous years that may be tested.
• Many other staff members will be involved with testing, and everyone is more the willing to assist, even when it disrupts their own schedules.
• Several teachers have shared with me that after they had their students take the practice test on the laptops, they felt much more confident about the testing process itself.
• The guidance counselors and assistant principals have spend countless hours entering information and preparing the staff for testing.

Next, the students:

• Most of our children enjoy working on computers and stay better engaged while on the computer than when using paper and pencil.
• Students have had lots of practice using the laptops and seem quite confident in using the touchpad mice now.
• When using the old bubble sheets, it was easy for a child to mark answers on the wrong line and complete an entire section before they realized they were off one line. This won’t happen with the online tests because the students only see one question and set of answer choices at a time.
• Students have practiced the test format with both guidance counselors and with teachers, and they are using the slash the trash tool and the highlighter appropriately on their practice tests.
• Students understand that only the teacher should click the Submit button, and they will depend on their teacher to double check and make sure they have not skipped any questions.
• Historically, most of our students have taken the SOL testing seriously and have done their very best. They will come through again this year!

And finally, the hardware:

• The TestNav software has been installed on all school laptops as well as on the desktops in third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms.
• We have plenty of computers for an entire grade level to test plus several extras that we can use if necessary.
• We have checked for wireless conflicts in each grade level.
• We have a plan for which computers will be used in each room for each day of testing.
• There will be a technology staff member in each school to troubleshoot any hardware issues that may arise.

So, thanks to the dedication of a wonderful group of teachers and staff, our students will indeed be just fine on “the” tests!

What other positives can you think of to share as we approach these final days before testing begins? Please add them to the comments!

Wireless issues can be very frustrating because teachers often don’t know what to look for or how to troubleshoot. Here’s a quick checklist of things to look for when problems arise, and there is a handout with more information that you can download from the Box widget in the sidebar.

1. Check the Power

   Are both of the black electrical cords are plugged in?
   Are both power switches on the back turned on?

2. Check the Network Connection

   Is the Ethernet cable (the one that looks like a phone jack) plugged in?
   Is it plugged into a “hot” port?

3. Check the Wireless Access Point on top of the cart

   Is the wireless access point getting power?

4. Make sure that the wireless is enabled on the computer

   Has the wireless been accidentally disabled?

5. Check for low, very low, or no connectivity

   Are some computers not picking up a wireless signal even though you have a working access point in your room?

6. Check for a cart in a nearby room that is not connected

   Is there a cart nearby that is getting power but the network cable is not connected?

Don’t ever hesitate to ask for help from your technician or ITRT! Hopefully, though, this checklist will help you out when help is not immediately available. Remember the handout in the Box in the sidebar too if you don’t already have a copy.

Here’s a really cute video that was produced for a competition sponsored by Interwrite. We need to continue encouraging children, but girls and boys, to use technology as much as possible, even at young ages.

Turn your speakers on and enjoy the video!

Many of you have recorded podcasts, and a few of you have mentioned that it would be nice to be able to add pictures. Well, now there is an easy and *free* online tool that lets you do just that. You can also skip around, so you can go straight to the student/picture that you are interested in. The web site is Voicethread.com.

Here’s a example of a voicethread we did with Melanie Smith’s first grades at West Salem after they created their own robots and wrote stories about them:

To set up your own account, go to voicethread.com and register for a new account. Then click on the Go Pro button, then click the K-12 Educators click here link. Complete the form and be sure to use your school email address so you can get a *free* Pro account.

After you have activated your account, let me know and I’ll help you get started with your first voicethread. I like to set the “Share” settings as public with comments, comment moderation ON, and Listed on Browse NO. This way, I can embed the voicethread on a blog or website, I can send the link to someone, but it will not be visible to someone just browsing through the site.

How can you use this great tool? How about book reviews, field trip pictures, digital stories, or even SOL reviews? Here are a few links to help give your more ideas:

VoiceThreads in the Classroom

VoiceThreads Examples

Second Grade Book Reviews (great project for any grade!)

Create Your Own Ending Story

Would you like to have a classroom web site without having to learn to use a web editor such as FrontPage or DreamWeaver? Have you considered starting a blog but it just doesn’t seem to exactly fit your needs? Would you like to create pages that your colleagues could also edit if you chose to give them permission? Then you may want to take a look at Google Sites.

Google is providing web space for schools and businesses to use either as web pages or for simple collaboration with others within the organization. Go to Google Sites, enter your school email address, and click the Get Started button. You will need to wait for a confirmation email before you can actually log into the site. (Note: my confirmation came into my junk mail folder, so be sure to check there. Gotta love mail filters!) Click on the link in the email to get started.

A few of us have already been experimenting with sites. Once you’re logged in, click on the Sites link, and you’ll see “Pam’s Pages” which I created just for playing with the features. The direct link URL looks like this: http://sites.google.com/a/salem.k12.va.us/pam-s-stuff/Home Notice that “salem.k12.va.us” appears in the address, but the site is actually stored on Google’s servers.

You may notice that even though you can see all of my pages, you cannot edit anything. However, I set it up so that Tina could edit my pages since we were working together to plan the March 7th inservice. Presently, my site is set up so that anyone in the world can view it. However, if I wanted to, I could make the site completely private by changing the settings, or I could set it up so that only people signing in with a Salem school email address could see it. I can also set up additional sites that I could make public or private as appropriate.

Google makes it easy to add a calendar, countdown timer, videos, and of course, text and pictures. Set your site as public and share the URL with your parents and you have a quick and easy class web page that you can edit from any computer that is connected to the internet.

You might want to set up a site just for your grade level so that everyone could add links and lesson plans to share with each other and/or with students. It’s also a terrific collaboration tool to use when working on budgets, class lists, and other grade level items. Simply share it with the other members of your grade level, your principal, and anyone else who needs the information. Nobody else will even know that the pages exist unless you explicitly share with them or make the site public.

So, add this to your “to do when I have time” list and give Google Sites a test run. I think you’ll like what you see, and as always, don’t hesitate to ask for help!

I came across the following video a couple of weeks ago, and Melanie Smith, reading teacher at South Salem, shared it with me again after seeing it at the VSRA conference. It’s only 4 minutes long and definitely provides plenty of food for thought.

I completely understand how difficult it can be to provide students with the types of technologies referred to in the video with the current emphasis on SOLs and NCLB. By working together, we can provide students with more opportunities to show what they have learned by creating their own digital projects such as podcasts, digital stories, blogs, and slideshows.

Tina and I hope to create a similar video using Salem elementary students that we will share with you next fall. It will be very interesting to see how our students’ comments compare with those of the students in the YouTube video above.

There are lots of keyboard shortcuts that may speed up your productivity, and here is a list of some of the most useful ones. Most of these work in any program, but they all work in Word and PowerPoint. You might want to print out a copy and keep it by your computer as a cheat sheet!

Control Z - undo (Office programs will let you go backwards numerous levels, but some kids’ programs will only undo the last action.)

Control Y - redo (This will undo the “undo”)

Control A - Select All

Control S - Save

Control X - Cut

Control C - Copy

Control V - Paste

Control P - Print

Control drag to duplicate in Word (control D in Powerpoint)

Control + Shift + > to increase size of selected text

Control + Shift + < to decrease size of selected text

Control + E to center text

Control + R to right-align text

Control + L to left-align text

Control N – create new document

Control O – open

Control W – close document but not exit program

Control F – find specific word(s) in the text

Control B – Bold

Control I – Italics

Control U – Underline

Shift F3 – Change case (toggles from lower to upper to title case)

Control End – Go to End of Document

Control Home – Go to Beginning of Document

I hope this saves you some time!

If you have ever experienced the frustration of having a great website bookmarked under your favorites on one computer but needing to locate that same site from a different computer, then you need to explore Delicious. This has become my one “cannot do without” website! Here’s short video that explains how it works:

Once you have your account set up, you can copy any URL, go back to your delicious account, and click on the Post link at the top of the page to bookmark the site. However, it’s much quicker to install and use the web buttons that will live at the top of your browser on computers that you frequently use. You will be prompted to install the buttons when you set up your account.

Like many web 2.0 sites, Delicious uses tags, which are simple ways to organize your bookmarks so you can search for them later on. When you first add a site, you will see the option to add tags before saving. Go ahead and add as many as you want. That way you can search for 3rdGrade or science or education or games…all for the same site. This is a huge difference between Delicious and PortaPortal, which only allows you to add a site to one category at a time.

The other really cool feature of Delicious is the ability to add people to your network so you can easily see what sites they have bookmarked. You can also save bookmarks for other people in your network by tagging them for:name. You can see who has saved the same sites as you by clicking on the “saved by (number) other people” link, and this may lead you to even more useful sites on the same subject.

If you don’t already have a Delicious account, I highly recommend that you set one up and start using it. If you do already have one, install the buttons for Internet Explorer or Firefox and get in the habit of using them.

You can download a handout for Delicious here. If you would just like to explore the site for a bit before setting up an account, go to my account or Tina’s account to find sites that are relevant to elementary education.